Beware Beware (15 page)

“That's what I was thinking.”

“Good girl. Good instincts.” He reached forward and patted my shoulder again.

There was a knock on the door, and Chaz said to come in. Molly opened it and leaned against the wall with a solicitous smile.

“Sorry,” she said. “Am I interrupting?”

“No,” he said brightly. “Song just needed a little help.”

She beamed at me and asked, “Would you like to stay for dinner? We're having mac and cheese, and there's enough for all of us and leftovers.”

I started to object, but Chaz stopped me. “It's fine, Song. You should join us. Meant to have you over one of these days anyway.”

The dining table only had four chairs, so Chaz brought one of the desk chairs over and sat in it himself. Opal and Ruby looked at me with overt interest and I smiled at them with what I hoped was friendly warmth. They were six and nine, and I didn't know how to talk to people under twenty.

Molly served me a full plate of mac and cheese with steamed broccoli, which I ate gratefully. I told her it was delicious.

“It's their favorite,” she said.

“The girls'?” I asked.

“All three of them,” she answered, and Chaz high-fived both of his daughters.

Molly asked me polite questions that were so carefully worded I knew Chaz had warned her not to pry. I tried to be extra sunny in my responses, but I was relieved when the conversation moved to the girls. I asked them about school, and they chattered enthusiastically. Opal was especially talkative.

During a lull in conversation, she looked right at me and asked, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?”

“Opal!” Molly dropped her fork. It clattered like a spun and falling coin, and her voice surged with dismay.

“It's okay, Molly.” I laughed. “I'm Korean. But don't ask your classmates that. It might make them feel sad.”

Opal toggled her gaze between me and her mother, and confusion built in her round eyes. “Why?”

“Because it isn't polite,” said Molly.

Chaz let out a rumbling belly laugh.

 

Nine

Daphne was at home with Jamie when I reached her after dinner. I told her I needed to talk to her, without Jamie there, and she didn't ask why.

We arranged to meet at the office at 9:00
P.M.
That gave me time to stop at home, and I was glad for it. I wanted a moment alone, a chance to lie down and breathe.

As I walked in the door, I realized I'd forgotten to let Lori know Chaz was feeding me. I had an apology ready to go, but I found the apartment dark, with no signs of cooking. This was unusual for a Sunday night.

A keen sense of worry crept into me, and I was relieved when I heard Lori moving in her room. The door was closed—also unusual—and when I got closer, I heard her crying.

I knocked, and the crying intensified into a long, animal moan. I cracked the door open. “Can I come in?”

She didn't say anything, so I went inside and sat next to her on her bed. She grabbed onto my arm like it was a lifeline.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Isaac—” she sobbed. “Isaac—”

I stroked her back, shushing softly to calm her down. After all the trauma we'd been through, I thought I could walk her through a broken heart.

“Isaac is in the hospital.” She got out the words and started to wail.

A chill shot through me. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. I put an arm around her and she cried into my shoulder.

When her sobs subsided, I ventured the horrid question. “What's wrong with him?”

“He got beat up,” she said.

“Do you think it was Winfred?”

“I don't know. Do you?”

“I believe in coincidence,” I said. “But only up to a point. Winfred certainly seems like the kind of guy who would do something like that.”

She hung her head and it swayed, thoughtfully. “It was three men,” she said. “What kind of guy would that make him?”

Lori stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her face. When she came back, she announced she was going to see Isaac before visiting hours ended.

“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.

She said no, and it was just as well—I had plenty else to take care of before the night was through.

*   *   *

I got to the office five minutes late, and Daphne was waiting outside, leaning against the door frame of Lindley & Flores, a perfect picture even in the dirty hallway light. She wore an orange blouse over fitted blue jeans and brown boots, and she gave the impression that she never looked less put together.

She looked up when she heard my footsteps, and smiled.

It took me a few seconds to construct a smile to telegraph back, and I wondered if this interview was in my control. I needed to make the shift between new friend and accuser, and I was going in with unsteady hands, too sweaty to take a firm grip.

“Hey,” I said, and I led her into the office.

When the door shut behind us, my mind screamed with an expansion of paranoid imagination. I'd let myself get comfortable with a client—I'd let her occupy a place of confidence in my life, given her the privilege of private access in this quiet, closed room. But if Daphne wasn't Daphne, all my assumptions about our relationship were bunk. Lanya Waters could be anybody.

I was good at hiding emotions, at least. Better, anyway, than most. Discomfort was easy, and fear—I knew the only fear I had was lurking and paranoid, so I let it shout its faint protest and sat down behind Chaz's desk. I opened his window and lit a cigarette, knowing he'd forgive me.

“How's your hangover?” she asked, crossing her legs and taking a friendly tone.

“Fine,” I said. “More or less.”

“How's Lori?”

“She barely drank anything.” It was a truthful answer, if incomplete.

“I noticed. That's not what I meant, though.” She paused. “What was the deal with that guy?”

I thought about Isaac in the hospital and Winfred's hand claiming Lori by the waist. “Did she say anything about him last night?”

“A little bit.”

“Really?”

“I asked.”

“Who he was to her?”

“No. If she was afraid of him.”

Daphne impressed me. It had been clear enough that Winfred was a tool, but I wouldn't have thought Lori even noticed if I were an outsider looking in. She was an open book when her guard was down, but she was working hard last night. I knew something was wrong because I knew her, and I knew her brief history with Winfred. Daphne went on intuition alone, and it bothered me that she sensed fear, and with it, implicitly, danger.

“What did she say?”

“She pretended not to hear me, but when I didn't look away, she did this.” Daphne mimicked Lori's tentative nod. It was so spot on I almost laughed.

“Well, she should be scared of him. It looks like he might have beaten the shit out of her new boyfriend.”

Her eyes went wide, but a split second later they turned dull and jaded. I read the quick acceptance in that quiet transformation, the way she engulfed the surprise like an ocean welcoming a fat but single raindrop. It sent a shiver down my back. I wondered why I'd told her a thing, this woman I hardly knew. She'd fled a whole life, become entangled in a murder, and that was just what I could verify. What would shake a woman who had seen so much?

“That kind of man,” she pronounced with a subtle throb in her voice. “That kind of man will do anything to get what he wants.”

“Do you know many men of that type?”

She shot me a bitter smile. “Everyone does, Song. Every last one of us.”

We sat in silence for a while. I finished my cigarette while she looked out the window, watching the dark nothing outside.

“Is Joe Tilley that kind of man, Lanya?”

She took her time turning away from the window, then raised one hand to her forehead and skimmed her fingers across it like she was sweeping away bangs that weren't there. She let her head collapse into the dropped palm and sighed.

I gave her a calm, serious look, and I knew I had managed to take the upper hand.

“My own mother doesn't call me Lanya anymore,” she said.

“Does she call you Daphne?”

“She doesn't call me anything.”

The air in the office was stale and oppressive, the silence thick enough to stir. After a minute, she spoke again. “I didn't expect that not to come out.”

“What do you mean by ‘that'?”

“My history. My past life.” She shrugged, and a shiver glided across her shoulders. “My lies. Whatever you want to call it.”

“If you knew I'd find out anyway, why didn't you just tell me?”

She gave me a cold, incredulous look. “I didn't
know
you'd find out, and even if I did—why should I volunteer? I didn't go through the bother of moving across the country and changing my name so I could spend my life thinking about who I used to be.”

“The police know, too,” I said.

“They know what?”

“At least that you're not who you say you are.”

“That's a dramatic way to put it,” she said. “I am exactly who I say I am.”

“Why did Joe Tilley pay a million bucks for your first painting?”

“Because,” she started, without missing a beat, “it was worth that much to him.”

I didn't know much about art, but I knew enough to recognize blatant irregularity. “What did he owe you?”

She smiled, a little sadly. “You doubt my talent,” she said.

“No, but I'm not an idiot.” I took a drag from my cigarette and kept my eyes on hers. “Come on.”

She stared at the smoke with a faraway expression, like she was watching a balloon fly into invisibility.

“Want one?” I offered her the pack.

She shook her head. “We were involved,” she said. Her voice was measured, her diction careful.

“When?”

“About five years ago. I'm sure you figured as much.”

I nodded without commitment. That they had dated seemed a logical enough conclusion, but I wondered if even the wealthiest men made seven-figure presents to every paramour. Joe Tilley had a penchant for marriage that didn't speak to financial shyness, but there was something so transactional about an art sale that I had a hard time seeing it as a gift. It promised more secrets than the flashiest diamond necklace.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

She pulled at a lock of hair, extending it down past her nose. When she released it, it bounced back like a spring.

“We met at a party,” she said. “He was married to Abby Hart at the time, and they were throwing this elaborate catered thing at their house. I was trying to make it as an actress. Did you know that?”

“I know you have a SAG card.”

“Well, let me tell you something. It is as hard for a black woman to make it in Hollywood as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”

“Amen, I'm sure.”

“I gave it an honest shot. It was miserable. I only went to auditions when the directors wanted a particular ‘look.' I don't think any of the casting calls said ‘Negress' but that was my niche. Tiny little niche.”

“But you went to parties at Joe Tilley's house.”

“Sure. As a cocktail waitress.” She smiled, and her teeth gleamed white and wet. “You should've seen my uniform. Most jobs, it would've been classified as ‘not safe for work.'”

I bit my lip. I should have guessed she wasn't there as a guest, and I felt a flash of embarrassment, which subsided when I saw that she wasn't embarrassed at all.

“So, what happened?”

She shrugged. “What would you think?”

“He hit on you?”

“You could say that,” she said, passing a hand through the dense curls of her hair. “It was this huge party, at this huge house. I doubt most weddings are half as nice, and this was for some minor occasion I can't even remember. I was one of four girls slinging cocktails in gold fringe bikinis, and I recognized one of them from an audition. We exchanged a look, kind of like ‘What are we even doing here?'”

“Job's a job.”

She shrugged and continued. “It was a decent gig, paid better than most, I guess. There were a lot of famous faces, but you get used to seeing those if you work service in L.A. long enough. Joe Tilley was one I'd seen before, though I'd never talked to him before that night. I have to admit I was flattered up a mountain when he said he recognized
me
.”

“Did he, really?”

“He did. He named the restaurant I worked at. He'd eaten there three months earlier.”

“So it wasn't just a line.”

“You can't get away with a line like that when you're that famous.”

“What happened next?”

“We flirted here and there the whole night. I was working, and he had guests, so it's not like we enjoyed a long, involved conversation. At some point he looked at me casually and said, in a low but normal tone of voice, ‘I want you to stay after the party.'”

“Pretty bold, I guess. You said his wife was throwing the party with him?”

“Yeah. She was barely ten feet away, but it's not like she paid any attention to that exchange. Her husband was just getting a drink from the hired help.”

“But you were able to stay?”

“I wasn't able
not
to. Have you ever met anyone very famous?”

I thought of my afternoon with Willow Hemingway, and decided not to derail the conversation. “Not really.”

“I've only met a few in any real capacity. Look, I'm about as jaded as it gets when it comes to celebrities. Used to see them all the time, and a lot of them were assholes. But when someone mega-famous looks at you, and sees you, and acknowledges you, and
wants
something from you that no one else can give—well there's real power there, real magnetism. I did stay when Joe asked me to. I didn't have a choice.” Her eyes vibrated with something dark and earnest, and I could do nothing but nod and ask her to go on.